The FBI had operational informants inside the Trump campaign and among Trump associates, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general report. The finding appears to be the first official confirmation that there were FBI-paid spies, called confidential human sources (CHS), close to President Trump.But don't you dare call it spying. But will they do anything about it? Maybe. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line, Will John Brennan be indicted? Thomas Lifson, AmThink, Bill Barr Brennan Bombshell: Durham seeking Brennan's emails, call logs, and other documents from the CIA. A lovely twitter thread from The Last Refuge (sundance at CTH), OK, so here's a little thread on the specifics hinted in this article.... => Durham Is Scrutinizing Ex-C.I.A. Director’s Role in Russian Interference Findings
From Da Intercept, Former NSA Director Cooperating With Probe of Trump-Russia Investigation. Adm Rogers is one of the good guys. He broke the story of the abuse of the NSA phone database by the FBI early, and the Obama crowd set off to get him, much the way they went after Flynn, but less successfully.
From Chuck Ross at Da Caller, FISA Judge Orders FBI To Identify All Cases Involving Lawyer Who Allegedly Altered Carter Page Email. Will they review everything Kevin Clinesmith worked on for cheating? Seems reasonable. Sundance at CTH thinks he sees something Did Mueller Place Special Counsel CYA in Report Footnote? – Proactive Distancing from Known Clinesmith Wrongdoing… He thinks Mueller, or more likely Mueller's handlers knew that Clinesmith fudged the FISA warrants, and used them anyway. Seems possible.
NyPo Editorial Board, If FBI was routinely cutting corners on FISA warrants, Comey will look even worse. Was it all FISAs, or only the one clearly aimed at Trump? Comey looks bad either way. Da Caller, Richard Jewell, Carter Page And The Illusion Of The FBI’s Power And Competence. Althouse, "The Steele dossier was central to obtaining the Page warrant, and the leaks about the dossier fanned two years of media theories about Russian collusion..."
"... that was one reason Mr. Mueller was appointed as special counsel. Mr. Mueller owed the public an explanation of how much of the dossier could be confirmed or repudiated. Instead he abdicated, and the mystery is why. Perhaps as a former FBI director, Mr. Mueller wanted to protect the bureau's reputation... A less generous explanation is that Mr. Mueller was more a figurehead as special counsel, and that the investigation was really run by his deputy Andrew Weissmann.... On the evidence in the Horowitz report, the special counsel team had to know the truth about the Steele dossier and false FBI claims to the FISA court, but they chose to look the other way."Twitchy, Kimberley Strassel isn’t buying FISA judge ‘only now acting shocked and angry’ about FBI abuses. Me neither. James Bovard, USA Today, Inspector General report on FBI's FISA abuse tells us one thing: We need radical reform. My first reform would be an office responsible for making the counter case against a FISA warrant. The current unopposed system is an invitation for abuse. I'll be surprised if Horowitz doesn't uncover more, if not on the scale that occurred against
From "Robert Mueller's Dossier Dodge," an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
And also in the Wall Street Journal from "FISA Court Owes Some Answers" by Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:
Specifically, Judicial Watch wanted information about private phone records that were released as part of the Democrats' partisan impeachment push against President Donald Trump. The revelation came about on page 153 of the House Intelligence Committee's report on its investigation into Ukraine.Sundance has a long Sidney Powell Extensive Interview With Eric Metaxas… It's worth watching in its entirety.
Also, Dan Bongino Interviews Devin Nunes About All Things “Spygate”…. Some revelation about the mystery FBI agent Joseph Pientka.
A thread from Roscoe Davis,1) Always remember, from the very beginning, they were against him, long before he was elected. This is who the swamp is. Lie, cheat, and steal. @realDonaldTrump has faced the headwinds and delivered everything he said he would. At Da Caller, JD Gordon, Former Trump Campaign National Security Advisor, tells how The Deep State Resistance Terrorized Innocent Americans, Including Me.
“I can imagine nothing more unconstitutional than a House impeachment without sending it to the Senate,” Dershowitz said. “It’s just unheard of. The Constitution provides that it is a two-step process, not a one-step process. It doesn’t say the president may be impeached, period, that’s the end of the matter. It says the president may be impeached, and if he’s impeached by the House, the Senate then gets to decide whether he should be removed.
“The idea that a stain would remain on the books, that the president would remain impeached, without an opportunity for the president to get acquitted by the Senate, is plainly unconstitutional,” he added. “It would be as if a prosecutor decided he had insufficient evidence to get a conviction, so he went after an ordinary citizen and said, ‘Look, I’m just going to indict him. Let the public know he’s indicted. For the rest of his life, he will stand indicted. But I have no intention of bringing him to trial. I will deny him his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. I’m going to let the indictment just hang out there.’ Obviously, no judge would tolerate that.”
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Democratic Senator Chris Coons have said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is already violating the oath by saying he’ll work closely with President Donald Trump’s lawyers.
“They have to pledge to do impartial justice,” Nadler said. “And here you have the majority leader of the Senate, in effect the foreman of the jury, saying he’s going to work hand in glove with the defense attorney.”
. . .
McConnell on Tuesday dismissed the idea that he has to be impartial. “I’m not an impartial juror,” he told reporters. “Impeachment is a political decision. The House made a partisan political decision to impeach. I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate.”
Althouse, "We face the horror of Trump because the structure of American democracy gives disproportionate power to a declining demographic group passionately convinced of its right to rule."There still remain 75+ vacancies on the federal bench. I'm sure the Senate can keep busy, even without impeachment articles to act on. https://t.co/syFAiAUzlx— Andy Grewal (@AndyGrewal) December 20, 2019
"Trump, with his braying entitlement, his boastful ignorance, his sneering contempt for pluralism, is an avatar of a Republican Party desperate to return to the 1980s, or the 1950s, or maybe the 1910s. He can’t betray America if, to those who fetishize the 63 million, he embodies it.... Democrats didn’t want to impeach, but once they decided to, Trump’s insistence that his Electoral College victory grants him impunity didn’t work. For one night, democracy asserted itself....
Writes Michelle Goldberg in "The Tyranny of the 63 Million/Impeachment didn’t undermine democracy. It vindicated it" (NYT).
What happened to the reverence for the Framers and the Constitution? The Framers were not all for majoritarian democracy, exercised moment by moment. They came up with the Electoral College and presidential terms of 4 years.
Scott Jennings at CNN? Donald Trump was elected to break the elite. Of course they want to impeach him, and at NYPo, Michael Goodwin, propounds on the meme Donald Trump’s ‘they’re after you’ tweet says it all: GoodwinOn its face, a tweet President Trump sent last week is fairly benign. It doesn’t mock anyone, isn’t personally nasty and hasn’t caused any hair-on-fire controversy.Yahoo! warns Trump Quest to Expose Whistle-Blower Hard to Pull Off in Senate. Depends on whether witnesses are called.
Yet it is powerful in its own way, for it artfully sums up the Trump era from the perspective of the president and his supporters. With a likeness to the Uncle Sam “I want you” poster, the disrupter in chief reaffirms in 14 words the belief of Trump Nation that the political establishment, the media, the permanent bureaucracy and yes, the deep state, are trying to crush him and them.
The president tweeted the image the day House Democrats voted to impeach him, and hours after his raucous rally in Michigan that evening. The tweet included no added comment because none was needed. The message is clear: I am all that stands between you and the barbarians at the gate. If I fall, you are next.
Critics regard it as fear-mongering, and there is no denying that the president wanted to rally his base, lest it be discouraged by the day’s events. Yet Trump’s oblique reference to a weaponized and powerful adversary is hardly unfounded, with a partisan, flimsy impeachment the latest example. The tweet’s siren call to believers is a shorthand way of saying that impeachment is just a continuation of the endless attacks against us.
My heart bleeds as Impeachment maelstrom sucks in a chief justice who shuns politics. You wanted to run with the big dogs.
Vicky Taft at PJ Media says Don't Look Now, But a Pro-Trump Guy Just Stole a Lefty Impeachment Slogan & Made 'It Great Again'
He told Piro when asked his view of impeachment:
"I say let's make impeachment great again. That's the best president going."And it looks like he's got company:
Linked by EBL in New Years Eve is Almost Here! 🍾🎉🍸, The Twenties Are Almost Here 🍾🎉🍸🥳,Do #Democrats realize that they just made #impeachment a new badge of honor for fighting socialists who want to burndown America? Great job! #MakeImpeachmentGreatAgain #DemocratsAreDestroyingAmerica #DemocratsHateAmerica #DemocratsTheEnemyWithin #TRUMP2020Landside #impeachmentday— AMERICA FIRST (@TheUSAsFuture) December 19, 2019
Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 🎄🎁 🇨🇦, Debbie Harry & Kermit the Frog: Rainbow Connections 🐸👱🏻♀️🌈, FX's 'A Christmas Carol': A Review, Christmas in Japan 🎄🎁🐔🍗🎅🏻, 🙀 'Cats' (the movie) may be the new 'Showgirls' 🙀, Sara Niemietz: I'll Be Home For Christmas 🎁🎄, The Aeronauts: A Review 🎈☁️🌧️⛅️., Dolly Parton: We Three Kings 💫👑👑👑, and Happy Hanukkah ✡️🕎🕯️.
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